Describe how your analysis of the conventions of real media texts informed your own creative practise. Refer to a range of examples in your answer to show how these skills have been developed over time.

1A) For the production of my AS media production I created the opening first two minutes of a thriller movie. In order to create a thriller movie the first thing which I had to do was understand the key codes and conventions of the thriller genre, therefore the real media texts which I analysed were existing thriller movies. These movies include 'Seven', 'Are you scared?' and 'Saw'. From analysing these movies I found that all thriller movies begin with an event which will grab the audiences attention without giving away too much information. This creates questions in the audiences head making them want to watch further in order for their questions to be answered. This style of opening is typical of the majority of thriller movies I looked at. For example in 'Seven', the film begins with two detectives investigating a murder scene in a house. In 'Are you scared?' the movie begins with a girl who is trapped and scared, screaming for help and getting her face burned by acid in her attempts of gaining freedom. In 'Saw' the film begins with two men chained up in a bathroom with no idea of how they got there. This had an inluence on the plot of the film which I was creating as I then knew that I must include an event which would grab the audiences attention and create questions for them during the opening of my film. This is why I chose to include a murder scene in my production.

All of the thriller films which i researched also included a police officer or federal detective. This influenced me to make the main protagonist in my production a police officer as this is a character which the audience would expect to see in this genre of film. The audience is very important when creating a film as their gratification is the key to a good movie. Unlike in the horror genre, which thriller movies are commonly mistaken for, the killers are not generally muscular or have supernatural strength, but are instead very average in size and strength. Instead of killing their victims through brute strength, they kill their victims in methodical ways. This is clear in all three of the movies stated above as the killers in each are very strong but each have a reason behind their acts. As I wanted my production to conform to the thriller genre as best as possible, I made the killer not seem physically dominating, but instead fairly small and slim. This would conform to the stereotypical killer in a thriller film.

However, the killer in thriller movies are not usually identified to the audience until the end of the film as the events which are shown in the first few minutes of the film are carried throughout while the audience tries to work out who the killer is as I did not want my film to be too predictable.

For the production of my A2 media production I created a music video, website and digipak for the Rock song 'No Reason by the music group Sum41. Once again I used Youtube in order to find and view pre-existing products from the music group and find their trade mark. I also had to look at pre-existing music videos of the same genre in order to find the general codes and conventions of the rock music genre. This allowed me to differentiate my product from the typical Sum41 music videos and be different while still keeping the final product within the borders of the genre so that the audience knows what to expect when they watch the video. This is because I wanted to keep the same audience as the Sum41 music group while challenging their expectations of the Rock music genre.

However, for my A2 production, the research which I had to carry out differed from that of my AS production as I did not only have to research the video but I also had to research the digipak, which was a different for of media as this is made up of images. I also had to research different websites of  rock groups and what type of information are presented on them. The digipak showed me what types of images are presented on a rock song digipak.

I found the editing was fast and there were alot of cut aways. They also included a lot of  different shots and shot types in order to grab the audiences attention and keep them interested. The main focus of rock music videos are generally the aesthetics of it, grabbing the audiences attention from the events taking place in different shots whereas in other genres, for example the Pop genre, the main focus for the audience is the narrative of the video and the story behind it. In rock music videos, the audience are able to  relate to the video and find similarities between themselves and the band or the characters within the video which is why there is almost always a character within the video who fits the 'punk' subculture. This type of character in Rock videos is an archetype.


For the websites I found that the band always provides information of their background, they provide a way of fans or others who are visiting the site to contact them. Their sites usually have a shop where visitors can buy merchandise which is exclusive to the band.  Their background image is generally very negative and plain, no patterns being displayed but instead having a plain black or white background or even just having a stone wall. I found that the sum41 official website had a stone wall background with disturbing, cold images on them such as blood, a hand scratching the wall and graffiti.


For the digipak I found that the song listings are usually found on the back of the digipak. If they are not found on the back of the digipak then they are found on the inside of the cover, however the majority of rock song albums have their songs on the back. 

In conclusion I found that my analysis of codes and conventions have improved between the time which I completed my AS Production and my A2 Production. This is because during the time of my AS Production I was only researching the video aspect of a product in order to complete my own. However in my A2 Production I was required to research the conventions of three different types of media, these being websites, video and image/digipak. I then had to interpret each of these different types of media in order to create my own. These three products also had to follow a generic theme as they each had to fit together.